The level of enjoyment audience members will have with Andrew DeYoung’s Friendship is tied directly to their tolerance for the humor of Tim Robinson. The star of the meme-inspiring Netflix series I Think You Should Leave has cultivated a devoted following by creating situations of embarrassment and characters who veer wildly from absurdist rage to complete self-delusion. (See the infamous “we’re all trying to find the guy who did this” meme.) In my mind, I Think You Should Leave is the funniest series of the last decade or so. While Robinson’s full-length feature as star does not reach his show’s highs, it’s still a hysterically funny, pitch-black comedy.
That feature is Friendship, and it is exactly what Robinson fans would expect and want. Not unlike the Tim Heidecker-starrer The Comedy, or even Larry David’s underrated Sour Grapes, Friendship sees a performer embracing discomfort and frustration for 90-or-so minutes. Let’s call it cringe cinema. (Cringema vérité?) Essentially, Friendship is an I Think You Should Leave sketch stretched to a movie, and if that sounds appealing then you are almost certain to walk away satisfied.
It may surprise viewers to learn Friendship was written and directed by Andrew DeYoung, who’s helmed a number of series with somewhat similar sensibilities (Pen15, High Fidelity, and Our Flag Means Death). He was the right choice to helm Friendship, and brings to this film a cold, often colorless visual texture that perfectly matches the ever-unsettled mental state of Robinson’s Craig Waterman.
Craig lives a slow-paced, rather dull life with his cancer-survivor wife, Tami (Kate Mara), and their teenage son. He works at an app company, loses phones far too easily, and is waiting for someone like Austin Carmichael to enter his life. Paul Rudd plays Austin, a new neighbor who represents the male idea for someone like Craig. He’s a TV weatherman. He plays in a band. He’s an urban explorer who can seemingly navigate the sewer system with ease. He also––most crucially––has a core group of devoted buddies.
Adult male friendship is a tricky thing, especially for married guys with children. The yearning for some outside-the-home companionship is ripe for comedy, and Friendship brilliantly explores how far this desire can go. Craig is the prototypical Robinson character, an individual who strives to be liked but is seemingly oblivious to the embarrassment, destruction, and chaos he causes. Austin quickly realizes that something is off with Craig and moves to break up the friendship. Of course, Craig has already purchased a drum set so the duo can jam, and has adopted other elements of the Austin lifestyle (including foraging for mushrooms and wandering below the city). None of this is good for his marriage, which is clearly on thin ice, or his job.
As Friendship progresses, virtually every move Craig makes is wrong. It’s admirable, really, to allow a character to be as blissfully uncaring as Craig, even if some disasters in his life are not wholly his fault. The film smartly avoids the easy path to a happy ending, at least for the audience, and its final shot indicates that Craig believes he has re-achieved his goal: entrance into the secretive, mysterious world of adult friendship. Whether has actually done so is another story.
It must be acknowledged that Friendship doesn’t add up to much, really. There is zero character growth, no catharsis, and little in the way of satisfying closure. That, however, is almost certainly the point. It makes for a sometimes difficult viewing experience, but constitutes the right approach for this material. It also features one of the cleverest, most surprising drug hallucination scenes in cinema history––no hyperbole, I swear––involving a cell-phone shop employee, a toad, and Subway (yes, the sandwich chain). It’s the most uproarious sequence in a very funny film, one that might not bear the impact of I Think You Should Leave but should earn many fans. Will Robinson ever break from the ultra-uncomfortable style of his series or this film? Let’s hope not. After all, if cringe has a master, it has to be Tim Robinson.
Friendship premiered at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival.
The post TIFF Review: Tim Robinson Masters Cringe In the Hysterically Funny Friendship first appeared on The Film Stage.
